Desert Wildflowers

Spring Wildflowers Adorn the Arizona Landscape

Many people conjure up thoughts of sand dunes, tumbleweeds, and dry washes when they think of the desert. Desert terrain can be dry and sparse. Although the look is different, the springtime does bring vegetation to the desert. When the winter rains are done, the desert comes alive with its own stark beauty. And wildflowers. Yes, there are flowers in the desert. You may not find daffodils or lilacs growing wild here, but desert wildflowers are abundant, bright and beautiful.

Arizona Desert Wildflower Picture Gallery

East of Phoenix in Superior, Arizona the Boyce Thompson Arboretum State Park was founded in the 1920's to showcase the beauty of the desert environment. If you enjoy walking (wear comfortable shoes!) in a unique setting you should make it a point to visit the Arboretum.

Arizona Desert Wildflower Picture Gallery

The best time to see wildflowers in the Arizona deserts is in March and early April. Of course, the number of wildflowers to be seen depends greatly on the amount of rain that the area gets the previous winter, so check the wildflower reports to see where the best flowers are. Even during a dry year, however, you can always visit the Arboretum for a good dose of desert color.

Arizona Desert Wildflower Picture Gallery

On a trip to the Boyce Thompson Arboretum, I took photographs of desert wildflowers. The spring is a beautiful time of year in the desert and I hope you enjoy these photos of the desert in bloom.

Deserts

Arid Lands Loose More Water Than They Gain

In the 1970s, the Sahel strip that stretches along the southern fringe of the Sahara desert in Africa experienced a devastating drought and land which was formerly used for grazing turned to desert in a process known as desertification. Approximately one quarter of the land on earth is threatened by desertification. The United Nations held a conference to discuss desertification in 1977. The result is the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, an international treaty established in 1996 to combat desertification.

Deserts, also known as arid lands, are regions that receive less precipitation then their potential evapotranspiration (evaporation from the soil and plants plus transpiration from plants equals evapotranspiration, abbreviated as ET). Deserts are located around the world.

The little precipitation and rain that falls in deserts is usually erratic and varies from year to year.

While a desert might have an annual average of 5 inches of precipitation, that precipitation may come in the form of 3 inches one year, none the next, 15 inches the third, and 2 inches the fourth. Thus, in arid environments, the annual average tells little about actual rainfall.

Rain in the desert is often intense and since the ground is often impermeable (meaning that water isn't absorbed into the ground easily), the water runs quickly right into streams that only exist during rainfalls. The swift water of these ephemeral streams are responsible for most of the erosion that takes place in the desert. Desert rain often never makes it to the ocean, the streams usually end in lakes that dry up or the streams themselves just dry up. Almost all of the rain that falls in Nevada never makes it to a perennial river or to the ocean.

Permanent streams in the desert are usually the result of "exotic" water, meaning that the water in the streams comes from outside of the desert. The Nile River flows through a desert but the river's source in high in the mountains of Central Africa.

Deserts aren't always located in hot places. Although the world's highest temperature was recorded in a desert (136 degrees F or 58 degrees C at Azizia, Libya on September 13, 1922), deserts can also be cold places. Not only do temperatures at night drop to near freezing levels due to the lack of moisture in the air (which usually holds heat in) there are deserts in cold places around the world. Antarctica is actually the world's driest continent, on average it receives less than two inches of precipitation annually.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Global Warming

Positive and Negative Effects of Global Warming to People and the Planet

In February 2007, the United Nations released a scientific report that concludes that global warming is happening and will continue to happen for centuries. The report also stated with 90% certainty that the activity of humans has been the primary cause of increasing temperatures over the past few decades.

With those conclusions and the conclusions of innumerable other scientists that global warming is here and will continue into the foreseeable future, I wanted to summarize the likely effects of global warming, into the advantages and disadvantages of global warming. First, we will look at the many disadvantages of global warming and then follow with the very small number of advantages of global warming.

Disadvantages of Global Warming

• Ocean circulation disrupted, disrupting and having unknown effects on world climate.
• Higher sea level leading to flooding of low-lying lands and deaths and disease from flood and evacuation.
• Deserts get drier leaving to increased desertification
• Changes to agricultural production that can lead to food shortages.
• Water shortages in already water-scarce areas.
• Starvation, malnutrition, and increased deaths due to food and crop shortages.
• More extreme weather and an increased frequency of severe and catastrophic storms.
• Increased disease in humans and animals.
• Increased deaths from heat waves.
• Extinction of additional species of animals and plants.
• Loss of animal and plant habitats.
• Increased emigration of those from poorer or low-lying countries to wealthier or higher countries seeking better (or non-deadly) conditions.
• Additional use of energy resources for cooling needs.
• Increased air pollution.
• Increased allergy and asthma rates due to earlier blooming of plants.
• Melt of permafrost leads to destruction of structures, landslides, and avalanches.
• Permanent loss of glaciers and ice sheets.
• Cultural or heritage sites destroyed faster due to increased extremes.
• Increased acidity of rainfall.
• Earlier drying of forests leading to increased forest fires in size and intensity.
• Increased cost of insurance as insurers pay out more claims resulting from increasingly large disasters.

Advantages of Global Warming

• Arctic, Antarctic, Siberia, and other frozen regions of earth may experience more plant growth and milder climates.
• Northwest Passage through Canada's formerly-icy north opens up to sea transportation.
• Less need for energy consumption to warm cold places.
• Fewer deaths or injuries due to cold weather.
• Longer growing seasons could mean increased agricultural production in some local areas.
• Mountains increase in height due to melting glaciers, becoming higher as they rebound against the missing weight of the ice.

El Nino - El Nino and La Nina Overview

El Nino is a regularly occurring climatic feature of our planet. Every two to five years, El Nino reappears and lasts for several months or even a few years. El Nino takes place when warmer than usual sea water exists off the coast of South America. El Nino causes climate effects around the world.

Peruvian fishermen noticed that the arrival of El Nino often coincided with the Christmas season so named the phenomenon after the "the baby boy" Jesus. The warmer water of El Nino reduced the number of fish available to catch. The warm water that causes El Nino is usually located near Indonesia during non-El Nino years. However, during periods of El Nino the water moves eastward to lie off the coast of South America.

El Nino increases average ocean surface water temperature in the region.

This mass of warm water is what causes climatic change around the world. Closer to the Pacific Ocean, El Nino causes torrential rains across the west coast of North America and South America.

Very strong El Nino events in 1965-1966, 1982-1983, and 1997-1998 caused significant flooding and damage from California to Mexico to Chile. Effects of El Nino are felt as far away from the Pacific Ocean as Eastern Africa (there is often reduced rainfall and thus Nile River carries less water).

An El Nino requires five consecutive months of unusually high sea surface temperatures in the Eastern Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America to be considered an El Nino.

La Nina

Scientists refer to the event when exceptionally cook water lies off the coast of South America as La Nina or "the baby girl." Strong La Nina events have been responsible for the opposite effects on climate as El Nino. For example, a major La Nina event in 1988 caused significant drought across North America.

El Nino's Relationship to Climate Change

As of this writing, El Nino and La Nina do not appear to be significantly related to climate change. As mentioned above, El Nino is a pattern that had been noticed for hundreds of years by South Americans. Climate change may make the effects of El Nino and La Nina stronger or more widespread, however.

A similar pattern to El Nino was identified in the early 1900s and was called the Southern Oscillation. Today, the two patters are known to be pretty much the same thing and so sometimes El Nino is known as El Nino/Southern Oscillation or ENSO.

Population Growth and Agricultural Production Don't Add Up

In 1798, a 32 year-old British economist anonymously published a lengthy pamphlet criticizing the views of the Utopians who believed that life could and would definitely improve for humans on earth. The hastily written text, An Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society, with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other Writers, was published by Thomas Robert Malthus.

Born on February 14 or 17, 1766 in Surrey, England, Thomas Malthus was educated at home. His father was a Utopian and a friend of the philosopher David Hume. In 1784 he attended Jesus College and graduated in 1788; in 1791 Thomas Malthus earned his master's degree.

Thomas Malthus argued that because of the natural human urge to reproduce human population increases geometrically (1, 2, 4, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, etc.).

However, food supply, at most, can only increase arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, etc.). Therefore, since food is an essential component to human life, population growth in any area or on the planet, if unchecked, would lead to starvation. However, Malthus also argued that there are preventative checks and positive checks on population that slow its growth and keep the population from rising exponentially for too long, but still, poverty is inescapable and will continue.

Thomas Malthus' example of population growth doubling was based on the preceding 25 years of the brand-new United States of America. Malthus felt that a young country with fertile soil like the U.S. would have one of the highest birth rates around. He liberally estimated an arithmetic increase in agricultural production of one acre at a time, acknowledging that he was overestimating but he gave agricultural development the benefit of the doubt.

According to Thomas Malthus, preventative checks are those that affect the birth rate and include marrying at a later age (moral restraint), abstaining from procreation, birth control, and homosexuality. Malthus, a religious chap (he worked as a clergyman in the Church of England), considered birth control and homosexuality to be vices and inappropriate (but nonetheless practiced).

Positive checks are those, according to Thomas Malthus, that increase the death rate. These include disease, war, disaster, and finally, when other checks don't reduce population, famine. Malthus felt that the fear of famine or the development of famine was also a major impetus to reduce the birth rate. He indicates that potential parents are less likely to have children when they know that their children are likely to starve.

Thomas Malthus also advocated welfare reform. Recent Poor Laws had provided a system of welfare that provided an increased amount of money depending on the number of children in a family. Malthus argued that this only encouraged the poor to give birth to more children as they would have no fear that increased numbers of offspring would make eating any more difficult. Increased numbers of poor workers would reduce labor costs and ultimately make the poor even poorer. He also stated that if the government or an agency were to provide a certain amount of money to every poor person, prices would simply rise and the value of money would change. As well, since population increases faster than production, the supply would essentially be stagnant or dropping so the demand would increase and so would price. Nonetheless, he suggested that capitalism was the only economic system that could function.

The ideas that Thomas Malthus developed came before the industrial revolution and focuses on plants, animals, and grains as the key components of diet. Therefore, for Malthus, available productive farmland was a limiting factor in population growth. With the industrial revolution and increase in agricultural production, land has become a less important factor than it was during the 18th century.

Thomas Malthus printed a second edition of his Principles of Population in 1803 and produced several additional editions until a sixth edition in 1826. Malthus was awarded with the first professorship in Political Economy at the East India Company's College at Halebury and was elected to the Royal Society in 1819. He's often known today as the "patron saint of demography" and while some argue that his contributions to population studies were unremarkable, he did indeed cause population and demographics to become a topic of serious academic study. Thomas Malthus died on Somerset, England in 1834.

Demographic Transition

The demographic transition model seeks to explain the transformation of countries from having high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates. In developed countries this transition began in the eighteenth century and continues today. Less developed countries began the transition later and are still in the midst of earlier stages of the model.

CBR & CDR

The model is based on the change in crude birth rate (CBR) and crude death rate (CDR) over time. Each is expressed per thousand population. The CBR is determined by taking the number of births in one year in a country, dividing it by the country's population, and multiplying the number by 1000. In 1998, the CBR in the United States is 14 per 1000 (14 births per 1000 people) while in Kenya it is 32 per 1000.

The crude death rate is similarly determined. The number of deaths in one year are divided by the population and that figure is multiplied by 1000. This yields a CDR of 9 in the U.S. and 14 in Kenya.

Stage I

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, countries in Western Europe had a high CBR and CDR. Births were high because more children meant more workers on the farm and with the high death rate, families needed more children to ensure survival of the family. Death rates were high due to disease and a lack of hygiene. The high CBR and CDR were somewhat stable and meant slow growth of a population. Occasional epidemics would dramatically increase the CDR for a few years (represented by the "waves" in Stage I of the model.

Stage II

In the mid-18th century, the death rate in Western European countries dropped due to improvement in sanitation and medicine. Out of tradition and practice, the birth rate remained high. This dropping death rate but stable birth rate in the beginning of Stage II contributed to skyrocketing population growth rates. Over time, children became an added expense and were less able to contribute to the wealth of a family. For this reason, along with advances in birth control, the CBR was reduced through the 20th century in developed countries. Populations still grew rapidly but this growth began to slow down.

Many less developed countries are currently in Stage II of the model. For example, Kenya's high CBR of 32 per 1000 but low CDR of 14 per 1000 contribute to a high rate of growth (as in mid-Stage II).

Stage III

In the late 20th century, the CBR and CDR in developed countries both leveled off at a low rate. In some cases the CBR is slightly higher than the CDR (as in the U.S. 14 versus 9) while in other countries the CBR is less than the CDR (as in Germany, 9 versus 11). (You can obtain current CBR and CDR data for all countries through the Census Bureau's International Data Base). Immigration from less developed countries now accounts for much of the population growth in developed countries that are in Stage III of the transition. Countries like China, South Korea, Singapore, and Cuba are rapidly approaching Stage III.

The Model

As with all models, the demographic transition model has its problems. The model does not provide "guidelines" as to how long it takes a country to get from Stage I to III. Western European countries took centuries through some rapidly developing countries like the Economic Tigers are transforming in mere decades. The model also does not predict that all countries will reach Stage III and have stable low birth and death rates. There are factors such as religion that keep some countries' birth rate from dropping.

Though this version of the demographic transition is composed of three stages, you'll find similar models in texts as well as ones that include four or even five stages. The shape of the graph is consistent but the divisions in time are the only modification.

An understanding of this model, in any of its forms, will help you to better understand population policies and changes in developed and less developed countries around the world.

One Six Eight designs IDs for National Geographic - Post News

Post, Sept, 2002 by Matthew Armstrong

SAN FRANCISCO -- Continuing its long history of working with the National Geographic Channel, One Six Eight Design Group created the on-air identity package and graphics for two of the network's upcoming fall shows: Phobia, a 13-part series, and Surviving West Point, a weekly show.

"The fun part of working with National Geographic," notes executive producer Jan Phillips, "is that every show is very different and each special has its own set of demands. One thing we focus on for these show packages is investigating each subject thoroughly before we start to even think about the design. You have to find the right theme for each subject."

Each episode of Phobia covers a different fear, so "the challenge was to visually represent fear itself instead of trying to portray every phobia into the show's ID package.

Working closely with National Geographic's creative team, One Six Eight devised a graphic illustration of debilitating anxiety using a color palette of muted green, yellow and blue to convey the sense of discomfort. DP Mush Emmons shot a variety of representational images -- wringing of hands, dilated eyes -- as well as phobic triggers like syringes and a snake. The studio also culled images from National Geographic's stock footage library. All of these images were then color corrected, at Varitel by colorist Chris Martin, to achieve the desired color tones. Editor Blake Facente then made a rough cut in Avid. One Six Eight animator Jeff Jankens used Adobe's After Effects to manipulate the images. The graphics were tweaked further with Quantel's Henry.